Adventures of John: In the Interim
by John The Adventurer
Summary: The universe is safe, for now. But I recently had a conversation with a very strange visitor, a conversation that has left me with far too many questions and not nearly enough answers. I soon left on a search that would take me to parallel universes and to the halls of Olympus and beyond. But I am not sure if the answers I received were enough to prepare me for what might come.
1. Introduction

Adventures of John: In the Interim

Introduction

Friends, it has been a while now since I last communicated to you through writing, so I felt that I should take the time to let you know that I have not forgotten you, and neither have I been idle with this time. For those of you who have been reading my stories from the beginning, we have been through so much together, with me experiencing it firsthand and you experiencing it through my words. For those of you for whom this is the first of my tales you have encountered, I urge you to go and read my previous stories so that you too can join me on this grand adventure.

I have not encountered any world-shattering disasters since my last adventure, for which I am glad. I enjoy danger, but facing the end of the world every few months can become a little much, even for me. However, I've found that many of those I have come to consider friends rarely show themselves during times of peace. I have not encountered the Doctor since the battle with the Voidheart, which feels like a lifetime ago, and Jack Frost appears to be everywhere except for wherever I am, even when I go traveling the world. I have more than enough friends and family to keep me company most of the time, but none of them can understand me the way my more impossible friends can, and I feel a particular form of loneliness being apart from them for so long. I almost wish the world **was** in jeopardy just so that I could see them again. Almost.

Friends, I feel old. I don't look any older, but I can feel it in my bones and in my soul. I've lived too much in too short of a time, and my mind feels too old for my body. I am sorry for getting this deep and serious with you, but with all that has happened since I first started writing, whenever I find a quiet moment my mind becomes filled with ever darker and stranger thoughts. Perhaps that is part of the reason why I so often seek out danger, it distracts me from the dark murmurings of my mind that would otherwise rob me of what remains of my sanity.

But now is not the time for such things. You came seeking answers, and answers I shall give you. For while the universe may not have been threatened, much has transpired since last we conversed, and I will share my experiences with you if just turn to the next page.


	2. Chapter 1: Other John and Mr Perfect

Adventures of John: In the Interim

Chapter 1: Other John and Mr. Perfect

Author's Note: If you have not read the epilogue of my last story, Death of Magic, then this chapter will probably be a bit confusing for you.

"Complicated my butt," I spat out. "I'm a smart guy, I don't have difficulty understanding complicated things. Now, are you me or are you not?"

"I'm you from another reality," the other John replied. "There are obviously infinite different versions of you spread across the universe, but the point in our timeline where we diverged was when we cast that spell, the one that sent you into the Void and after that into Arendelle. You entered into a fairytale world and indulged in a beautiful fairytale romance." His voice turned spiteful towards the end, almost mocking. Though his expression was guarded, his eyes could not hide his pain.

"I took a different path. I fell into a world embroiled in war, a world even more enriched with magic than the one you entered. When I won that war I found another world to experience, and then another and another. While you romanced your beloved snow queen, I indulged in our darker desires and embraced magic in a way I never could have imagined back on Earth. For nearly three hundred years I let the powers of the multiverse flow through me, giving me power beyond our wildest dreams. I traveled to thousands of universes. I became immortal. I became more powerful than any sorcerer or god could ever hope to be. I became much more than human, but also much less. And in my foolishness I failed to see what was right in front of me."

"When you learned of the danger to your universe, you immediately returned home. You left your beloved in order to save your universe from destruction. But I was blind. I did not see until it was too late, and I returned just in time to see my universe torn apart before my very eyes."

I didn't know how to respond to that. I had seen pain when I looked into his eyes, but I could never imagine that. His entire universe, gone. It was unimaginable.

"You are the one that got it right," he told me, his voice bitter. "Mr. Perfect. The one who saved the universe. Do you realize how many ways that could have gone wrong? How many ways it did go wrong? How many different versions of you are wandering around the multiverse with their universe erased from existence? Of all the different timelines, you somehow had the exact series of events, made the exact choices required to save your universe. You are the one that saved your universe, the one that stayed human, the one that got it right."

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"Because you told me to," he replied with a smirk. "You from the future that is, the man I usually refer to as Mr. Perfect. You're more like a junior Mr. Perfect. Anyways, you told me to tell you that something is coming. Something that only you can stop. It will not be an easy fight. You will have to prepare yourself, and when the time comes you will not be able to call upon any of your old allies. The only thing that will be able to stop it is you."

"Why didn't the future me tell me this himself?" I asked.

"He's busy with his own stuff," Other John replied. "Or your own stuff, technically. It's all very important and such, but I never really listen when you start talking about it. Something about the next generation of something or other, something like that." His eyes grew distant for a moment, as if he was watching something far beyond my own sight. "Now I need to go. I have a journey of my own to return to. I have my own wonderings, my own questions that need answering. The multiverse is a vast place, and I am running out of time."

He turned away to leave, only to turn back as if he had suddenly remembered something. "And don't trust the Void. It may seem all peaceful right now, but you know just as well as anyone that not everything is what it seems. There is a good reason why that Voidstone works again. And use it. That stone and what it can do is more important than you know." He gave me another, somewhat less unsettling smile. "I'll see you around, Junior."

With that he was gone, leaving me alone in the Void with nothing more than an ominously vague warning, no clue what to do about it, and far more questions than answers.


	3. Chapter 2: Two Worlds, Same Conclusion

Adventures of John: In the Interim

Chapter 2: Two Worlds, Same Conclusion

With Other John's words still ringing in my mind days after our conversation, I sat alone in my bedroom, deep in meditation. As I meditated, I was consciously aware of both my physical body here in our world as well as my magically-created body in Arendelle. This separation of my consciousness between the two worlds I call home is something I do very rarely, as the effort required makes it impossible to maintain my concentration if any distractions of any kind interrupted me. Luckily, in both locations night prevailed, and everyone nearby was sound asleep, and thus unable to disrupt my meditation. I wouldn't have delved into this divergent meditation, except that I found the effort had a clearing effect on my mind, allowing me to see the worlds with a clarity that would hopefully allow me to better understand the questions lying before me.

In Las Vegas I stared at the bookshelves in my room, at the various books that lined the wall. In Arendelle I stared across the room at where my Reality Disk hung on the wall, and as I watched the Voidstone at its center began to draw all of the world into the stone's dark empty heart, the room and everything else swirling around and falling into its depths. I shifted my gaze and I saw that the room was still there, and everything was just as it had been. Even with my experience, the Voidstone still managed to unsettle me. Even with its more dangerous powers restrained, it still had an unsettling effect on my mind whenever I looked at it for too long.

In Las Vegas I stood up and walked over to the bookshelf, running my fingers over the spines of the books. Some of them were old, bought by the box from garage sales by my father when he was younger. Others were much newer, books that I myself had purchased over the years or had gotten as presents from friends and family. Some of them had hardly been touched, and there were a few that I am nearly certain that neither I nor my father had ever decided to read through. Other novels were so worn their front and back covers were completely gone and their pages were falling out, a state brought about by being read over a dozen times and having been dropped and dogged-ears and having drinks accidentally spilled on them during each of those many readings.

Despite the differences, each of them told a story. Each of them had a tale to tell, and each of them was the doorway to a universe other than our own.

In Arendelle I walked forward and gently caressed the edges of the Reality Disk, the gleaming metal gleaming dully in the half-light of the moon streaming through the window. This disk was a creation of my own doing, born of my imagination and brought to existence through my magic. It was simple, and it was beautiful in that simplicity. It was nothing more than a single metal disk, serving as a casing for the Voidstone at its center, but its simplicity belied the implacable power it contained. This simple disk, when paired with the Voidstone, was a vehicle for travel across the multiverse, a doorway to nearly every universe.

In both Las Vegas and Arendelle my lips curled into a soft smile as the two lines of thought returned to the same subject. Every day that week since my conversation with Other John my mind seemed to be drawn to that subject. No matter what I was thinking of, my train of thought always returned there. The multiverse seemed to be calling to me, urging me to explore its vastness.

The idea was certainly appealing. Seeing new worlds and returning to the worlds I had visited once before would be an adventure unlike any other. However, the allure was not without trepidation. Other John had once answered the call to see the multiverse, and he had gotten lost within himself, until three hundred years had passed and he was no longer human. If I followed his example, I too could lose myself among the wonders of the multiverse while my mortal form on earth withered away as my consciousness bounded from universe to universe.

But despite the dangers, I knew I had to go. If Other John was telling the truth, there was something coming that I would need to prepare myself for, and I cannot prepare myself for something if I don't know what I need to prepare for. I needed answers, and I wasn't going to find them in our universe, or even in the universe of Arendelle. I would have to find the answers out there, among the distant worlds of the multiverse.

My mind made up, I stepped away from the bookshelf in my house even as I pulled the Reality Disk off the wall in the palace in Arendelle. I ended the meditation, allowing my splintered consciousnesses to return together into a single whole and sending that consciousness back to Arendelle, where I still held the Reality Disk in my hands. I turned around and threw the disk with a flick of my wrist, sending it spinning. It began to pick up speed on its own, becoming a blur of movement with a still, dark center.

 _Send me to where I can find answers_ , I thought towards the disk as I stepped forward. The world warped around me and Arendelle vanished from my vision as my magic took hold and tossed me out into the multiverse.


	4. ON HOLD

**On Hold**

Hello everyone. I am so sorry for this, but I have to put this story on hold. I am sorry for my weeks of absence, but certain events occurred that made me unable to work on writing. Maybe sometime in the future I will be able to tell you more about the events that transpired. However, time is limited. I don't know exactly when, but sometime in the near future I will be leaving for a long time. I will be gone for at least two years, possibly longer. There has been a project that has been on my mind for some time now, and with my time as limited as it is, I have decided to focus my efforts on that project instead of finishing this tale.

This project is a revisit to my earliest work, _The Adventurer and the Snow Queen._ When I first wrote that tale, the memories were fresh in my mind, but so was the pain and heartbreak. I wrote the entirety of the story on my cellphone in the space of three days, using every bit of spare time I had to write it down. I felt that I needed to finish it as soon as possible in order to come to grips with what had happened, so I rushed the work. In my haste, I feel that many mistakes were made, both grammatical mistakes and the mistake of leaving out large amounts of time and some important events.

I tried to fix some of these problems by writing _The Adventurer and the Snow Queen, The Lost Weeks_. This told the stories of much of the time I left out in the original tale. However, I have been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I do not believe that this was enough. In order to truly do justice to the events that occurred on my first trip the Arendelle and the impossible effect that they have had on my life ever since, I believe that it would be best if I rewrote the entire story.

Obviously, none of the events would change. I am not attempting to rewrite history here. However, my skill in writing has improved greatly since then, and I believe I can better portray the experiences than I originally did. I am aware that my memories of the events have faded somewhat over time, but I am confident that with the help of the original text, along with a little magic to help my memory along, I will do nearly as good of a job, if not as good, as I would if I had just experienced it all yesterday.

Not only that, but I will have help this time. Elsa, Anna, Rapunzel, and a few others have all agreed to allow me access to their own memories so that I can also show you their perspective of some of the events. With their help, I am certain that I will be able to craft a more complete, more emotionally engaging, more accurate, and an overall _better_ portrayal than the original. I am thinking of calling it something like; _The Adventurer and the Snow Queen, a Tale of Love and Loss._ Maybe something different. I haven't decided on the title yet.

My time may be limited, but until the time comes when I do leave I want to do as much as I can, and as I work on this new project I want5 you to tell me what you think. I appreciate your opinions on these matters and do not take them lightly. I'll see you soon my friends, and you'll see me, in a fashion. Though your mind's image of me is almost certainly more impressive than the reality. I hope you all enjoy this new project, and I wish you all the best. Until next time.


End file.
